Dr. Stephan Haggard, University of California – San Diego
April 19, 2015 (Sun) 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
UNM Continuing Education Conference Center

In his talk Stephan Haggard will outline a path-breaking new approach to North Korea, based on a large-scale and unprecedented refugee survey in China and South Korea. The survey has found that a great many transformations are under way in one of the most isolated, poorly understood and dictatorial countries on earth. North Koreans hold their government in low regard and are far more skeptical of official explanations of their misery than is generally supposed. An overwhelming majority of refugees surveyed support unification with the South and report that their peers remaining in North Korea hold similar views.

Dr. Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies; Director, Korea-Pacific Program (KPP); and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the School of International Relations & Pacific Studies. He works on the political economy of developing countries, with a particular interest in Asia and the Korean peninsula. He is the author of Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries (1990), The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (1995, with Robert Kaufman), The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000) and Development, Democracy and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, Eastern Europe (2000, with Robert Kaufman). His current research focuses on the relationship between inequality, democratization and authoritarianism in developing countries. Professor Haggard has written extensively on the political economy of North Korea with Marcus Noland, including Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (2007) and Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (2011).

Supported by New Mexico Humanities Council and Sandia National Labs